Remember back in 1998 when Bill Clinton was in hot water because of an office intern? And the court compelled him to answer? And in his statement he said “it depends on what the definition of ‘is’ is”? Romney hasn’t even been elected yet, and he’s already having to define the words that he uses for us. This can’t be good.
In a December 16 taping of MSNBC’s ‘Meet The Press’, while defending his faith and addressing concerns of racism, Romney told host Tim Russert
You may recall that my dad walked out of the Republican convention in 1964 in San Francisco in part because Barry Goldwater, in his speech, gave my dad the impression that he was someone who was going to be weak on civil rights.
Well, it turns out that was a lie. Phoenix reporter David S. Bernstein did some research and found Martin Luther King Jr’s first hand account in a June 23, 1963 newspaper
According to the next day’s account in the Holland Evening Sentinel , the crowd at the Center “lustily booed,” when representatives of Governor George W. Romney read a proclamation declaring “Freedom March Day in Michigan.”
But Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t fault Romney for his absence, which the governor ascribed to his policy against public appearances on the Sabbath. “At a news conference following the march . . . [King] refused to criticize Romney for not attending the demonstration,” the Sentinel reported.
When confronted with his lie by a group of Iowa reporters (a state in which he’s trying to recover), Mitt Romney had the following illuminating words
If you look at the literature, if you look at the dictionary, the term ’saw’ includes being aware of in the sense I’ve described. It’s a figure of speech and very familiar, and it’s very common. And I saw my dad march with Martin Luther King. I did not see it with my own eyes, but I saw him in the sense of being aware of his participation in that great effort.
If you have to pull out a dictionary to defend your statement, then you’re probably too close to the edge of a lie to be arguing the point to begin with. Honestly I don’t know why he’d lie to begin with, the Washington Post independently found that while George Romney did not march with King, he was a supporter of King and the civil rights movement. Mitt wouldn’t have had anything to defend if he had just told the truth to begin with. The Washington Post, incidentally, rates Mitt’s lie as ‘four Pinocchios’.
I know that given the opportunity, politicians will say anything to get into office. This was just dumb on Mitt’s part. He’s spent millions building and maintaining a lead in key states. He’s been publicly anti-endorsed twice. He’s trailing in the polls, and slipping. And now this. It just doesn’t make sense. I’d be willing to give Mitt the benefit of the doubt, but he asking for permission to lead the country. Frankly, I don’t want to have to carry my dictionary around with me to keep track of whether or not the President is lying to me.
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